How Jenna Ortega Became Wednesday Addams | Teen Vogue

you're going to see sides of her in this series that you've never seen before or may not seem authentic to her and having her go through the typical teenage experience and trying to avoid making her every other human who's immensely important to me and and I hope that that that care translates hi my name is Jenna Ortega and this is how I became Wednesday Adams I first heard about the role of Wednesday shooting a horror film with a24 called X and I got an email one day that Timber and wanted to meet with me for the role of Wednesday Adams I was pretty taken aback I didn't know if he had any familiarity with who I was but then also Wednesday I actually was compared to my entire life so it was just kind of a weird circumstance I kind of felt like I was being pranked or something I was always compared to Wednesday uh because I'm very dry and I don't think people can tell when I'm being serious or when I'm being sarcastic and I didn't think it was that bad until we were on set sometimes and Tim might say oh that was dark when I first got off of the role I did not even consider fan base I didn't consider it until we are shooting or when I started having conversations with Netflix and they were talking about things like Comic-Con and Funko Pops I think that's when it really started to settle in the internal Panic that I faced the pressure of oh people live for this character people tattoo this character on their bodies she's been a consistent Halloween costume for years I still Panic about her I still lay awake at night staring up the ceiling thinking I should have done this it's been done so flawlessly in the past and that wasn't a trade of Wednesday that's something that Christina started it is scary it's a lot of pressure and you you want to do justice to someone like her and there's a lot of anticipation and expectation and what an incredible job and I think that I had to go to work every day and remember it's a Netflix show you know my mom is an ER nurse she saves lives I want to make people feel good and I want to give them that break and that's all it is Christina didn't join the shoot till towards the end I was a really big admirer of her work the strange thing is we never talked about her being Wednesday once I think maybe one time on the last week of shooting I made a reference to her Wednesday but I think that we both were able to appreciate the fact that they were going to be different I didn't want to knock her off and I didn't want to be doing some impression of her and I think it was really important that we just kept our our ideas separate physicality wise I it's funny I think my posture has improved immensely since working on that job because I always made sure I had a straight back I didn't move my hands or arms much if I didn't have to at some point during the first couple weeks of shooting I did a take where I did not blink at all and Tim said I don't want you to Blink anymore so that's another thing too where it's just weird mannerisms we try to incorporate things like that the thing about the blinking is I didn't realize that I was doing it it just kind of happened because every every time we started to take I would reset my face I would drop all the muscles in my face and Tim really liked the Kubrick stair where I stared through my eyebrows it's just a bit intimidating I think something like that is not blinking clearly it struck something with him and I trust his opinion so much because he's Tim Burton it's funny watching him work when he genuinely appreciates something he gets excited like a kid and I also didn't want to seem like I was doing too much with my voice but I think that there is something about her that is formal I mean she's so intelligent she has incredible vocabulary I'm stubborn single-minded and obsessive but those are all traits of great writers and serial killers I kind of altered my pitch a little bit I think at times and also the way that I pronounce certain words I know that they wanted to bring some sort of realistic aspect to her and make her more of a human being so I tried and maybe in more dramatic scenes or more intense scenes to kind of dropped a little bit more purchase how would that have looked on your record terrible everyone would know [Music] I feel a set of Wednesday I would wake up around 4 30 I'd be picked up around 5 20 ish so I get dressed then I go to hair and makeup and then after I pretty much go straight to set and I start blocking and then we start shooting immediately after and we would do 12-hour days we would have rolling lunches so we just eat when we could after shooting I might have a couple of lessons I might go to stunt rehearsal to learn the fight sequence that we have going on for the next day so I'd do that for an hour and then I might have a cello lesson and then I go home that was my day that was my life for eight months in Romania the first time I went on set I had to walk through with Tim in the first set that I saw was the dorm room Enid and Wednesday's dorm room it was wonderful they had just put up the stained glass but I remember also being a bit nervous or a bit okay this is gonna be my environment kind of feeling it out and it was helpful because I was just getting to know the beautiful wonderful Emma Myers for the first time he plays Enid the dynamic between Wednesday and Enid is one of my favorite Dynamics in TV you know it's dark storm cloud and sunshine it's always so fun to play off of one another and it's very rare that I meet some wouldn't feel instantly connected or comfortable with them and Emma has always been that person and I think anyone would with her she's that kind and genuine of a person and another one of my favorite people on this planet first season of a show we did kind of just jump into it there was a lot of different things we were doing archery fencing canoeing cello when you do a television series I feel like first season you're still discovering the character in yourself because we've never seen Wednesday as a teenage girl she's always been eight ten-year-old and you know when young children say really dark things so genuinely it's very sweet and Charming in a sense where you know as soon as someone gets older and they become teenager it's kind of nasty it's a weird game to play especially when all anybody wants to see is Wednesday be rude that's the kind of the Charming thing about her she says what everybody wishes they could say when I look at you the following emojis come to mind rope shovel hole it was something that I tried to play too at certain beats of the show where if she did have disagreements with someone or something she did do to somebody else was inconsiderate it was never coming from malicious intent but just genuine misunderstanding bringing that layer of Innocence back or Genuine appreciation for all things a bit more Gothic but we've never spent this much time with Wednesday she's always been the one-liner she's always been the one-off and you're gonna see sides of her in this series that you've never seen before or may not seem authentic to her and having her go through the typical teenage experience and trying to avoid making her every other human is immensely important to me and and I hope that that that care translates I do remember though in in the second episode I'm playing with this telescope and I'm seeing something in the water and when I was doing it I kind of did the eyebrow ways and we were playing with it a bit and I told him I said I feel like a silent film actor which I've always wanted to do silent film and it was really exciting for me because I felt like that really encouraged mannerisms or kind of balance the aspects of surrealism and realism in the film and that's something I think that he really appreciated as well so he kept saying oh it's like a silent movie it's like a silent movie and I think tackling something like that in that way because they can be very theatrical intense and that is what Adam's family is but it is a hard thing to play with an expressionless character and also to have an emotional Arc as a character and push a series forward I think something that we we try to do when we were shooting though is with every take we've tried different versions We Do the flat version would do a version with focal inflection a version with expression so much trial and error all on camera too I appreciated Tim too because if I told him I said hey be straight with me is this awful and he would tell me yes or no by the way he never called me awful he's too sweet you work with someone like Tim it's like he doesn't even know his own name someone with a name like his could very easily use it as an excuse to treat people poorly and I never got that from him once when creating a new Wednesday with Tim Burton I know that he wanted to establish a different look it was really important to him that there was something different with the hair because you know to her iconic braids but he wanted there to be a very clear distinction that this was a different girl and I remember we had hair makeup test at his place in London and we tried silver streaks in my hair short tiny braids really long thick braids we just tried all different variations and at some point the hairdresser that we were working with Paul he brought out a clip of Fringe there was something about it that Tim really enjoyed but something about it that was a bit off so I told the hairdresser I said hey maybe maybe just cut my actual hair he said are you sure and I said hey if we have time to grow it out we have time to grow it out whatever let's just see and then he loved it and that was something that that we married and we stuck to and I remember him being very peculiar and specific about the look you look a little pale please excuse Wednesday she's allergic to color I think a big part of Wednesday's color some of it does play in filter there was a little bit of makeup but I spent so much time in Romania and it was Winter that it got to a point where they used to put makeup on my hands and things like that and they just stopped I would ask the makeup artist like hey you don't think I need more and she said no it's kind of a mismatching your skin tone now I lost all melanin something that I learned from Wednesdays I think it's always important to play whoever shoes you're stepping into just a real person just a real person because it's very easy to be caught up in a show like this and especially someone who has no emotion to be scared to show emotion or scared to do something that's untrue to character but ultimately you've got to be true to yourself and kind of trust yourself in that process and it's just really about trusting your own gut and and marrying whatever it is that you stick to and makes it so much easier to let go at your job and explore and uh have a good time with it [Music]

Channel: Teen Vogue

Views: 7,305,283

Keywords: addams family, addams family netflix, addams family reboot, character study, jenna ortega, jenna ortega addams, jenna ortega character, jenna ortega funny, jenna ortega interview, jenna ortega netflix, jenna ortega teen vogue, jenna ortega teen vogue interview, jenna ortega wednesday, jenna ortega wednesday addams, netflix, teen vogue, teen vogue character study, wednesday, wednesday addams, wednesday addams family, wednesday netflix

Id: m0aG6urHpSI

Length: 9min 27sec (567 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 16 2022